About 25 riders stood in a semi-circle around Greg Frazier. He was on the steps at the entrance to a beat-up restaurant in Grant, Colorado. They looked attentive. They should have. When Dr. Frazier speaks about the future, it is always best to be attentive.
"You won't be the fastest guy. There will always be someone who is faster than you. In this event there are some ISDT qualifiers. You won't beat them."
I stifled a gasp. International Six-Day Trials qualifiers? Good God. Who were these guys?
"I'm always asked while the ride is in progress, `Who's winning?'" Frazier continued. "That's easy. More than 120 people sent in applications to run The Big Dog Rally. You're the ones who made the cut. You're all winners."
He let that sink in.
"So just go out and have a nice ride. Our chase van is clean. The lady who's running it gets really pissed off when she has to get it dirty picking someone up. You don't want to have her pissed off at you."
There was a small communal chuckle. The lady to whom Greg referred looked a little irritated anyway at having to be in Grant, 60 miles west of Denver, at 9:00 a.m.
"Now I'm going to ask Bob Higdon to give a benediction," Greg said. He provided a nice introduction that exaggerated my modest background by about two orders of magnitude.
I spoke briefly. I remember saying that I was probably the happiest person in the crowd because at the conclusion of my blessing I would be able to ride straight back to Denver and take a nap; those poor guys were going where I wouldn't even want to take a Jeep. I mentioned that on the following Tuesday afternoon I would be giving a benediction at the start of the Iron Butt Rally in Salt Lake City. It wasn't clear to me which event I would least like to participate in. To die by fire or ice? Who cares? It's death either way.
In a sense I know these Big Dogs, the ones who ride across the passes at Cottonwood and Engineer and Imogene. I also know the ones on the Iron Butt Rally, who in a few days will be starting another of the most demanding motorcycle endurance events ever conceived. I know them, can talk to them, tell lies with them over a beer, and can remember many of their names. But I am not one of them.
I'm allowed to participate in such events, if giving a benediction is even considered "participation," because I make it a point to get close to the organizers. I know that I'll never be that close to the participants. To run such rallies you have to earn your stripes with more than bullshit and a smile.
So I gave my usual benediction. It's the facetious one that comments on the fact that priests, ministers, and others of the cloth �� never lawyers �� are normally charged with such functions. I reply to my own argument by noting that priests can promise heaven and happiness; as an attorney, I can promise that by meeting me they will soon encounter only hell. It always gets a laugh.
The Big Dogs then charged off toward hell. I politely declined again Greg's offer to ride one or two of the milder passes. I know my place. I headed back to Denver.
August 26 - Day Minus Three
The Basic Drill
I took a leisurely ride out to Denver from Washington, D.C., last week. My daily miles were 405, 412, 409, and 411. I was pleased with the poetic consistency of averaging 409.25 miles per day with virtually no standard deviation. I arose late each day (8:00 a.m.), stopped for lunch, and quit early (5:00 p.m.). I didn't speed. It was a basic low-rent ride. I've done worse. Much worse.
Consider, then, what the Iron Butt contestant is going to face. The minimum checkpoint-to-checkpoint distance to be traveled is 9,052 miles in 11 days. That's 823 miles per day, not travelling even 10 feet out of the most direct route to obtain even a single bonus point. And if on my ride to Denver I had doubled the miles I rode each day, I would have been time-barred before I even made it to the first checkpoint in Spokane.
There are 54 riders entered. Only one-quarter of them have ever successfully finished an Iron Butt. Steve Chalmers, this year's rallymaster, anticipates that the winner will have ridden about 13,250 miles, averaging just over 1,200 miles per day. I note again that such a figure is nearly triple what I recently did.
How many of those riders have a legitimate chance to win? I can count maybe five. In that tiny group I'd put Steve Attwood, the Englishman who won the '93 Iron Butt, and Ron Major, the '91 IBR victor. It's a small club.
And not much larger, in my opinion, will be the number of riders who will successfully make it back to Salt Lake City. I doubt 20 of them will do so. The tolls are terrific on rider, machine, and anything within the psychic aura of that combination.
Some years ago, I'm told, Rider magazine did a survey that asked their readers to state the number of miles they would travel during a single day's ride on a bike. The median response was 125 miles.
Next Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. the rally begins. Most of the riders will have passed 125 miles before 7:00 p.m. They'll be heading north, into the mountains, and the 98-degree temperature of late August in the valley of the Great Salt Lake will be a dim memory as the sun dies. Soon it will turn cold. They will keep riding.
Two hours. Not quite one percent of what they need. As they climb higher into the southern end of the Sawtooth Mountains, the temperature will drop some more. On they will ride.
August 27 - Day Minus Two
Preparation and Murphy's Law
Mike Murphy is a tall, big man with an imposing presence. In an elephant pack he would be one of the older bulls that you have to keep an eye on. Here in Salt Lake City he is just another one of the Iron Butt contestants. In his real life back in Illinois he operates on people's brains and spinal cords.
As a neurological surgeon, Murphy knows human frailty in all its forms. He has a frailty of his own: Two weeks ago he underwent knee surgery. The wound is refusing to close. Now he needs a skin graft. But if he did that, he wouldn't be able to sit on a motorcycle for 16 or more hours a day. For the good doctor, this wasn't a close call. He's carrying extra bandages.
Another Mike, Mr. Kneebone, would have advised against the surgery. Kneebone knows that Rule No. 9 of the Iron Butt Rally is that you never, ever make any substantive changes to motorcycle or self shortly before the rally. Whatever you do is going to go wrong at the worst possible time in the worst possible way with the worst concomitant expense. Dr. Murphy is getting a graphic example of his namesake's law.
Mike, Tim Moffitt, and I had ridden over to Salt Lake City during the weekend. We encountered one of the contestants, a young man gearing up for his first huge ride, at dinner one evening. He and Mike had a chance to talk briefly when Tim and I returned to the motel. Mike showed up a few minutes later.
"I'll put him in the `non-finisher' category," Mike said glumly.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"He's looking for a first aid kit," Mike said. The kit is a requirement for registration. "He's known for two years that he had to have the kit." Mike shook his head.
"When I ran my first Iron Butt, my bike was packed one month before I was scheduled to leave my house," he said. "On the morning that I left, all I did was open the garage, get on the bike, and turn the key."
Most of the time everyone manages to make the preparations. Most of the time the parts that break in the hours before the rally begins can be fixed. A knee can be bandaged and a first aid kit can be found. When the kid finally buys his kit, maybe he can use it on Dr. Murphy. Maybe.
August 28 - Day Minus One
Rogue's Gallery
In the next couple of weeks, if you see any of these people, take pity upon them:
Ron Ayres '95 BMW K1100LT
Bradley Hogue '93 Honda Gold Wing
Garve Nelson '83 Honda Ascot
Leonard Aron '46 Indian Chief
Steve Attwood '83 Moto Guzzi MK III LeMans
Ron Major '94 Honda ST1100
Eric Steven Faires '93 BMW K1100LT
Michael G. Murphy '93 Honda ST1100
Roy Eastwood '94 BMW R1100RS
Jim Culp '94 Honda Gold Wing
Phyliss Lang '94 H-D FXR
Fritz Lang '79 Honda Silver Wing
Brian Bush '88 BMW K100LT (film crew)
Gary Gottfredson '91 K100RS
Bob Honemann '65 BMW R60/2
Rick Morrison '94 BMW R100RT
Gregg Smith '87 Yamaha Venture
Skip Ciccarelli '86 Cal II Moto Guzzi
Charles Elberfeld '94 BMW K75SA
Martin Jones '92 Kawasaki Voyager
Morris Kruemeke '89 Honda Gold Wing
Ed Otto '95 Honda Helix
Eddie Metz '85 Honda Gold Wing
Thomas Loegering '95 BMW R1100GS
Thomas Loegering Jr. '85 BMW K100RS
Ken Hatton '91 Kawasaki ZX-11
Robert Fairchild '91 Honda Gold Wing
Martin Hildebrandt '93 Honda ST1100
Rick Shrader '94 BMW R1100RS
Doug Stover '88 Honda Gold Wing
Harold Brooks '84 Honda Gold Wing
Steve Losofsky '86 BMW K100RS
Kevin P. Donovan '94 Honda GL1500A
Ardys Kellerman '94 BMW K75RT
Gary J. Eagan '95 BMW K1100LT
Horst K. Haak '95 BMW K1100RS
Jesse Pereboom '93 H-D FLHT
Dennis Searcy '85 H-D FLT
Frank Taylor '93 Yamaha FJ1200
William Thommes '91 H-D FXRP
Robert Ransbottom '91 BMW K75RT
Chuck Pickett '90 Honda Gold Wing
Ron/Karen McAteer '94 Honda ST1100
Michael Stockton '93 BMW K1100LT
Eugene McKinney '94 R1100RS
Mary Sue Johnson '93 H-D Dyna Wide Glide
Karol Patzer '88 BMW K75C
Keith Keating '94 BMW R1100RS
David Kerslake '94 Suzuki GSXR1100
Ed Fickess '89 Yamaha Venture
Hank Rowland '86 BMW K100RT
Boyd Young '91 BMW K100RS
Jerry Clemmons '84 Honda Gold Wing
Kevin Mello '93 K1100LT
Eddie James '93 BMW K1100RS
August 29 - Day Zero
Lift Off
At 4:00 p.m. MDT, about 10 minutes ago, the riders were given their route instructions and bonus locations for the first leg of the rally. It will run from the western outskirts of Salt Lake City to Spokane, Washington.
They will have 23 hours to travel approximately 723 miles. By Iron Butt standards that is pretty much a walk in the park. But the base mileage does not include obtaining any bonus points for visiting locations that may be somewhat off the most direct route.
For example, the biggest bonus of the leg, grabbing a gas receipt in Anchorage, is worth a fat 963 points but would clearly result in the rider's being time-barred in Spokane unless he or she were traveling in a jet plane. As the bonus opportunities become less absurd, their point values decrease proportionately. A gas receipt in Boise, lying on the direct route from Salt Lake to Spokane, is worth a crummy 7 points.
The critical object is to make the Spokane checkpoint tomorrow afternoon. Failure to do so results in a 2,000-point deduction, loss of all bonus points on the current leg, and the loss of all bonus points on the following leg. Additionally, missing a second subsequent checkpoint anywhere results in automatic disqualification. Missing a checkpoint by even a minute beyond the outside window is as bad as it gets for a contestant without being admitted to a hospital.
Rallymaster Steve Chalmers has been cranking up the pressure for the last few days. Some of the riders are ready to pop a small vessel right now. One poor fellow stood next to a tree beyond the parking lot yesterday afternoon, relieving his stomach of various biles. He's now had another 24 hours to consider what he has to look forward to. Yes, it sure does sound like a lot of fun.
At 4:55 p.m. Chalmers will give them a five-minute warning. At 5:00 p.m. they will take off in a shotgun start. A documentary film crew and a local television station will continue filming until the last bike disappears. I'll pack up my own bike and head back to Colorado. There are some good bonus points there, if I were competing.
The scene in the parking lot now resembles a fighter squadron on the deck of a combat carrier. They study their maps and their bonus sheets the way pilots would consider targets of opportunity on a bombing run over heavily fortified enemy territory. In less than an hour they will be gone. Radio contact will be lost with them unless one of them flames out before Spokane.
We should know more tomorrow. Stay tuned.
August 30 - Day One
Salt Lake City to Spokane, But How?
Here is the problem: You have to ride from Salt Lake City to Spokane. You leave Salt Lake at 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday. You must be in Spokane by 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday. There are two straight-line routes, each about 720 miles: I-15 to I-90, or interstates to Boise, then state routes north. The bonuses are on the latter course. They're not much, but they're better than sticking to the slab.
If that was all you had to worry about, the answer would lie in how lucky you feel. If you're a crap shooter, you head to Boise and bet that when you ride through the Sawtooth Mountains after midnight you won't hit any of the 136.9 million deer that want to find out what it's like to commit suicide by eating your headlight.
If you're careful, you take the easy interstate route, minimize the chances of a close encounter of the cloven-footed kind, and get a good rest in Spokane. You may be in next-to-last place, but at least you're alive.
But that really isn't all that you have to worry about, because there is a bonus in Helper, Utah, that is worth a tidy 86 points and adds only a couple of hundred miles to your route. And as long as you're heading away from Spokane toward Helper, you might as well visit the territorial prison in Rawlins, Wyoming, and pick up a very hefty 199 points. You'll do an 1,100-plus-mile day but you should clearly be in first place, even if you're beaten purple.
Then again, if you're a true hero of the Lawrence of Arabia mold you might consider the 315 point bonus at Chimney Rock, Nebraska, but no one in his right mind would do such a thing. Ride 1,400-plus miles on the first day of an 11-day butt-breaker? Spare me.
No, spare Gary Eagan, Rick ("Swamp Thing") Shrader, and Ron Ayres. They not only made the ridiculously out-of-the-way trip, but they made it to the Spokane checkpoint before the window closed. It is a story for the Iron Butt ages.
It is also the story of three guys who, I predict, will have almost certainly depleted their reserves to the point that no recovery is possible. Ardys Kellerman and Morris Kruemeke rode to Los Angeles from Fort Worth on the first leg of the '93 Butt by way of Louisiana, and while they were heroes for a day, both were time-barred at the next checkpoint and subsequently disappeared so far down the drain that not even the Roto-Rooter man could find them.
Still, those big bonuses have a fascinating lure, and it would be wonderful to pick one up �� say the Wyoming prison �� without having to ride all those pesky miles to find the answer. Why not let your fingers do the riding? Maybe use AT&T to save a few gallons of precious fossil resources? Ah! Could this possibly be legal, to call someone to track down an answer? Of course not. The contestants are repeatedly told that they must ride to the bonus location, not beam themselves to it. In Iron Butt history only one contestant ever tried.
The bonus was a poker chip. Richard Frost, a New Jersey cop, decided to avoid a 200-mile round-trip, sat at an immigration checkpoint at the California border, and offered $20 to any incoming motorist who might have a $5 poker chip from a Las Vegas casino. He eventually got one and, like the petty crooks he nailed every day of his working life, was himself snared in Mike Kneebone's net. Mike has devised a computer program to cross-check odometer readings based on a contestant's recorded checkpoint mileage, referenced to a correction factor that is established before the rally begins. If a rider claims that he went to Armpit, Indiana, Kneebone will know it, plus or minus a few miles. He promptly hung Frost, a friend of his, out to twist slowly in the wind.
So today when Keith Keating ��another cop �� came up with an answer for the Wyoming prison question when he rolled in to Spokane, it wasn't long before a significant problem arose. The answer that Keating turned in was wrong. Say what?
Jim Plunkett, the owner of the BMW dealership/checkpoint, questioned Keating about the answer, stating that he was prepared to deny the bonus claim. A contestant has a right to protest the checkpoint's decision. Keating muttered that he wouldn't protest. And for good reason. He'd called the prison, not ridden to it. And when he'd called, his fellow law enforcement officers had given him the wrong answer. Talk about your basic poetic justice.
Rallymaster Steve Chalmers was reportedly so furious at the cheating that he was ready to throw Keating out of the rally before the sun went down. But since the rider had not compounded his felony by writing down his odometer reading and time of arrival on the bonus sheet, as the rules require, Chalmers relented. Apparently the Miranda warnings that he had issued prior to the rally hadn't been absorbed by Officer Keating, who protects and serves in Connecticut and visits prisons in Wyoming mostly by credit-card calls.
On another note of equally low humor, extraordinary interest has surrounded the progress of the Honda Helix scooter, piloted by Ed Otto of Chicago and sponsored by Motorcycle Consumer News magazine. I am happy to report that the Helix is running well and that Eddie made it to Spokane in time to sleep about 10 hours.
At day's end I had completed my own Velvet Butt ride. Tim Moffitt and I hurtled back yesterday from Salt Lake City, after the real riders had left the motel, to his home in Denver ----�� a vicious 530 mile ride with an eight-hour layover at the recently redecorated Motel 6 in Grand Junction, Colorado. I then hopped a flight back to Dulles this evening. It had taken four days to ride from D.C. to Denver last week; the same trip back home took four hours tonight.
That's my kind of cross-country travel. And the in-flight movie was pretty good, too.
THE TOP TEN AT CHECKPOINT NO. 1
Name Motorcycle Points
1 Eagan, Gary BMW K1100LT '95 2,936
2 Shrader, Rick BMW R1100RS '94 2,874
3 Ayres, Ron BMW K1100LT '95 2,870
4 Losofsky, Steve BMW K100RS '86 2,639
5 Hatton, Ken Kawasaki ZX-11 '91 2,621
6 Kruemeke, Morris Honda Gold Wing '89 2,621
7 Metz, Eddie Honda Gold Wing '85 2,621
8 Taylor, Frank Yamaha FJ1200 '93 2,621
9 Jones, Martin Kawasaki Voyager '92 2,446
10 Young, Boyd BMW K100RS '91 2,436
Others of note
14 Major, Ron Honda ST1100 '94 2,276 ('91 IBR winner)
17 Keating, Keith BMW R1100RS '94 2,257 (AT&T's entrant)
20 Attwood, Steve Moto Guzzi '83 2,242 ('93 IBR winner)
49 Otto, Ed Honda Helix '95 2,175 (MCN's entrant)
55 Ciccarelli, Skip Moto Guzzi Cal II 0 (deer - repairable)
August 31 - Day Two
Notes from the Firing Range
The Iron Butt Rally field is poorer this year for the absence of Dave McQueeney, a former participant and the holder of one of the most grueling endurance records in the books. When he decided to take on the Four Corners Tour some years ago, he asked for an exemption to the "one bike" rule. He explained to the incredulous organizers what he wanted to do within the three-week time limit.
He would start with a bike at his home in Los Angeles and ride down the road to San Ysidro for the first corner. Then he'd ride home, pick up a different bike, and ride up to Blaine, Washington, for corner No. 2. Then he would come back home, get yet another bike, and ride to Madawaska, Maine. Go back home. Grab fourth bike. Ride to Key West. Ride home.
They didn't believe he could do it; they obviously didn't know Dave well. He proceeded to ride 16 consecutive thousand-mile days and crushed the Four Corners with time to spare. It was in my view an endurance feat second only to Fran Crane's and Mike Kneebone's tour of the 48 contiguous states in 6.6 days on nine hours' sleep.
At noon on Tuesday, five hours before the IBR began, I heard a familiar voice in the motel room next door to mine. It belonged to Mr. McQueeney. I greeted him happily. He had been at the Chicago Region rally the day before. A lot of folks have trouble making rallies in their own state; Dave will ride 2,500 miles one-way to attend the ones he likes.
We caught up on old times and traded Iron Butt predictions. I mentioned at one point that the BMW contingent was populated solely with K and R1100 engines.
"Don't forget Bob Honemann's R60," Dave corrected me.
True enough. It is a classic unfaired, unwindshielded, retro bike, suitable for a slow morning ride in third gear down a county road in June, 1965. Honemann would be riding with Ed Otto's Honda scooter, an improbable combination.
"We'll be a good team," Ed explained with a grin. "He can pull me up the hills. And I can provide the lights."
Dave and I went down to the parking lot. Eddie James blurred past us, a man who looks fast even when he's walking.
"Did you hear what happened to him this morning?" I asked Dave.
James had changed the radio in his bike the week before, blatantly violating Kneebone's Rule No. 9 (Don't change anything before the event). He had not checked the wiring job that a friend had done. Earlier that morning he'd turned the radio on. Instead of the melodies of Snoop Doggy Dog, he received a blast of smoke and fire.
Somehow he had managed to repair the wiring. No one knew why the main harness had not been fried. No one knows why James wants to listen to Snoop Doggy Dog.
Dave and I walked over to the R60. It might not be a powerful bike, I thought, but it's a rock. Keep oil in it and the bottom end will outlast a rock. Honemann, the owner of a motorcycle shop in Chicago, had taken good care of it. It should go the distance, I thought.
It didn't. This morning Bob's girlfriend received the telephone call she didn't want. Honemann told her that a crankshaft bearing had come apart. He and Ed Otto had worked on it for several hours near Butte, Montana. Bob finally made Eddie leave; the old R60 was going home in a truck.
One bike down; many more wait in the wings.
Checkpoint No. 2 is Brattin Motors in San Diego. Riders must arrive not later than 10:00 a.m. PDT, Friday. They�ll depart at noon. The only way out is east. The only thing to the east is the Mojave Desert. They'll hit it in mid-afternoon, if they can survive the Labor Day Weekend exodus. The desert heat won't melt a motorcycle, but not for want of trying.
Later tonight we shall see which of the leg No. 2 bonuses is most attractive to those contestants who are bent on suicide. Some will try. Bet on it.
August 31 - Day Two
The Valley of the Shadow of Death
The country from Spokane to San Diego is some of the prettiest and most varied you can find anywhere on earth. If you're an Iron Butt contestant, you're not looking at it. You're looking at the stripe down the middle of the highway, concentrating on staying on one side of that line. It is good form to keep to the right side of it. Sometimes I wonder how Steve Attwood, the Englishman who won the '93 Butt, manages to remember which side of the road is which.
Forgetting the bozo bonus at the White House, the next highest bonus (413) on the second leg is the Custer Battlefield in southeast Montana. It would require riding 1,900 miles in 41 hours, but at a brisk speed, you might manage eight hours sleep during the stretch.
If, in addition, you could squeeze in a visit to Death Valley, you'd pick up another 283 points and add 200 miles to the first 1,900. By my calculations you will have time for no more than 200 minutes of sleep on the leg.
Given that, the eastern bonuses look a trifle grim. Is there anything to the west? There sure is, a bundle of bonus stops, topped off with 268 points at the Golden Gate Bridge. Now this surely is more like it, right? It's the shortest line from Spokane and apparently worthwhile.
The operative word there is "apparently." If the contestant decides to take the western ride, he or she will soon find out why so many depressed people use the bridge as their launch pad into the hereafter. The bridge is a poison pill dressed up as a friendly bonus. Take that pill or just jump off the bridge. It doesn't matter. You almost certainly will not make San Diego on time and you very easily could be time-barred.
The problem is that Chalmers won't let the contestant hit that bridge before 2:00 a.m. PDT Friday morning. If the bridge receipt is dated any earlier than that, it doesn't count. The checkpoint in San Diego opens eight hours later. That requires nearly a 65 mph average down I-5, one of the ugliest roads on earth.
Maybe that's possible, but one other problem remains: How is the rider going to get through the morning rush-hour traffic in Los Angeles? If you haven't seen it, you can't believe it. I've seen it. I still can't believe it.
With world-class riders on the loose, I am hesitant to say it can't be done, but I sure don't see how. Even given nosebleed speed, lane-splitting, and blind luck, I see in the most favorable case a late arrival of at least an hour, a 60-point deduction. If the contestant can't make the checkpoint by noon, it's classified as a score-trashing miss.
So, as Sherlock Holmes once observed, when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true. But the truth in this case is as vicious as it gets. I think there's only one way to run this leg; I'm just glad I don't have to do it.
It requires steaming right down the middle of the desert from Spokane for the bonuses in Reno and Tonopah, averaging 55 mph all night and all the next day. If you can average more than 55, you might be able to grab an hour's sleep. If you average less, you're sunk.
It is critical that you reach the Death Valley visitor center before it closes at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday. For this bonus you need an actual park stamp from that building; a picture of the park's sign, normally acceptable evidence, here is insufficient. Now, at last, you can sleep for 10 hours (if you can find a motel room), arise at 3:00 a.m. on Friday, and slog the last 350 miles to arrive in San Diego by 10:00 a.m.
Steve Chalmers has been thinking about these problems for two years. It took me three hours with a 486/33 desktop computer, Automap Pro, and a 16-ounce Dr. Pepper to work through it. The riders, dazed from the first day's ride to Spokane, will have somewhat less time to make their decisions.
Somewhat.
September 1 - Day Three
The Inside Line
As was demonstrated with mathematical clarity by your esteemed scribe in the last post, taking the western route through San Francisco from Spokane to San Diego amounted to a suicidal snare. Only one rider, Brian Bush, did it, and, as predicted, was time-barred at the second checkpoint.
Not that it mattered to him. Brian is the Iron Butt's official film documentarian and was planning on riding only the first two legs of the event anyway. At least now he has an appreciation of what the competitive riders have to consider when they are handed their bonus sheets for the upcoming leg. An early poor decision always has costly consequences.
Five riders �� Ron Ayres, Frank Taylor, Eddie Metz, Ken Hatton, and Rick Morrison �� each took the alluring eastern arc to the Custer Battlefield in Montana, averaged 3,000 bonus points, and added 2,000 miles to their bikes' odometers over the course of 41 hours. It is reported that in San Diego they looked like Chernobyl refugees.
Contrast their experience with that of Gary Eagan, the leader of the pack at Spokane, who took the inside route straight to Death Valley as your scribe suggested. He too rang up 3,015 points on the second leg, though riding 350 fewer miles and catching seven hours sleep near San Diego before the checkpoint opened. With an entire continent to cross in the next 75 hours, should we bet on Eagan, or on Ayres, Taylor, Metz, Hatton, and Morrison? What to do? What to do? I only wish roulette were this easy.
Morris Kruemeke and Eddie James visited the Valley, took their points, and are well-positioned (seventh and eighth) for the next stretch. James rides with a teddy bear �� his official entry is under the name of "Lyle the Bear" ��and can run long days with anyone. Kruemke, a legend in Texas where legendary status is hard to come by, steers a monster Gold Wing. When not competing on the IBR where fuel capacity is limited, he sticks 39 gallons of gasoline on the bike and has run for over 1,200 miles without putting his feet down. Yes, I have seen the drainage tube, but I didn't touch it.
Notes from the battlefield
Steve Attwood, the '93 IBR winner, is missing in action. He failed to show up in San Diego. For those of us who were betting heavily on this truly remarkable fellow's chances of a repeat victory, it is indeed some of the saddest news of the day. In a field of first-rank riders, no one ever recovers from a missed checkpoint.
Rick "Swamp Thing" Shrader, as usual, followed his own muse. It lied. He came in 43 minutes late and dropped from second place to fifth. He is the most dedicated of the 54 starters, as the Iron Butt tattoo on his arm attests, and his friends are hoping that after DNFs in the last two Butts, he can finally complete this event in one piece.
California attorney Leonard Aron on the '46 Indian limped in with just 18 minutes to spare. The bike's clutch is slipping badly. According to the last four living sources who are knowledgeable about Indian clutches, the chances of a finish are non-existent. Despite that, Aron, who could have been an extra at Woodstock in 1969 and should be in mourning for Jerry Garcia, is reported to be in a superlative mood.
Steve Losofsky, co-owner of Reno BMW, was victimized by a freak accident. Westbound on the most deserted road imaginable, U.S. 50 west of Delta, Utah, an oncoming truck threw a rock at him. It shot through the lower fairing of his K100, broke his leg, and rendered him hors de combat. Too bad. He coulda been a contendah.
Forget the radar detectors. Leave the police scanners at home. Notebook computers with Automap are for geeks with pencil protectors. What Kevin Mello and Rob Ransbottom need is a decent alarm clock. They overslept in San Diego and came in 50 minutes late.
In the "I hear what you're saying but I still don't believe it" category, all of the Harleys are still up and running with the youngish, 26-year-old Jesse Pereboom �� I mention his age only because the average age of the top three riders is 51.3 �� leading the Milwaukee contingent. Mary Sue Johnson, who is old enough to know better, is currently in 16th place (and the top woman) on her H-D Wide Glide. Four years ago rallymaster Jan Cutler wouldn't even accept her IBR application. Mary Sue, you've come a long way, baby.
Speaking of the distaff group, Ardys Kellerman, the second-oldest rider in the rally at the tender age of 63, moved up a notch to 22nd position. If you're looking for someone to admire and root for, Ardys is your lady. I believe she has a grandchild older than Jesse Pereboom.
Senior citizen Garve Nelson, 71, who when introduced at the rider's meeting was the only person to receive a standing ovation, is running steadily on his 500cc Honda, the second smallest bike in the rally.
Skip Ciccarelli's deer-hunting expedition proved to be fatal to his Guzzi. Time-barred at Spokane, he could not find parts in time to make San Diego. Two missed checkpoints and you're out.
Tom Loegering, the heartbreak kid of '93, moved up from 19th to 15th on his R1100GS, a bike that not even Tom will be able to ruin. His son, however, on a K100, has become a retiree from Iron Butt competition in 1995. Give him another 25 years and he can probably run with the old man.
Then there is the Honda Helix scooter, aimed here and there by BMW veteran Ed Otto. Can it still be running? It can indeed, and it managed to haul Ed's not inconsiderable weight to 2,518 bonus points on the second leg. Horst Haak, a former BMW Motorcycle Owners of America mileage champion on a '95 K1100RT, outran the Helix on the San Diego leg by a thumping 18 points.
Weather, Weather Everywhere, Nor Any Place To Hide
In the riders' initial package was a small form. It asked the contestants to describe their funniest or most memorable experiences on the event. When Mary Sue Johnson turned her sheet in at the San Diego checkpoint, she had written, "There is nothing funny about the Iron Butt." Jesse Pereboom echoed her thoughts, but added "I'm having the time of my life!"
He may have changed his mind today. Leaving San Diego at noon guaranteed that the field would storm into the Mojave Desert at the height of the mid-afternoon heat. A casual glance at the weather charts of the southwest offered no hope: It was criminally hot. Even normally scalding towns were setting records. One rider, Robert Fairchild, bailed out of the rally in Gallup, New Mexico. He had come through Yuma at a boiling 113 degrees. It then became worse. He told Steve Chalmers that he couldn't take it any longer.
You can't blame Fairchild for a poor route choice. There are only three rational ways east from California: I-10, I-40, and I-70. You can't reach any of them without riding through a firestorm this weekend. For myself, I enjoy the heat. I'll turn on the electric vest at 70 degrees and don't feel comfortable unless it's at least 90. But I do recall that the one and only time I absolutely could not continue was on a day that was not as hot as it was in Arizona this afternoon.
Eddie James may be the only person enjoying the hellish weather. He made a wrong turn while in Death Valley and ended up riding through that nightmare twice. It was 118 degrees.
There is expected to be no significant change in the weather over the next few days.
Animal, Mineral, and Vegetable Sightings
Steve Attwood has surfaced. A deer drilled his Guzzi Le Mans in Oregon. He was uninjured and the bike may be repairable. He is believed to be trying for Florida, though he will have to ride to San Diego first. It sounds impossible, but if anyone can do it, Attwood can.
Not so fortunate was Skip Ciccarelli's Guzzi. A deer took the bike out on the first day. He was unable to obtain parts, including a headlight assembly, and has retired. What is it about Moto Guzzis that Bambi finds so irresistible?
Chuck Pickett squared off against an elk near Yellowstone Park. He reported that the animal, an adult the approximate size of a housing project, stopped in the road and turned to face him as he approached. They stared at each other for "three minutes," according to Pickett. It probably was more like 10 seconds, though it must have seemed like 10 hours. I have never been able to remember the difference between an elk and a moose. I know that one is psychotic and that the other is both psychotic and mean.
Tom Loegering came close to hitting an elk as it was skidding across U.S. 93 in Montana. How close? Tom said that it needed breath mints.
Perhaps it wasn't potentially as grim as if he'd been behind a truckload of pit vipers, but when the back door of the tomato truck swung open and dropped a few hundred of them in front of Roy Eastwood, he decided that keeping his R1100RS upright through the slop was worthy of an award from the National Gyroscopic Society. We'll look into it.
When Jesse Pereboom pulled into a gas station in Oregon, his tank was attended to by "a hot chick." Jesse is 26 and, after a few days on the road, anything remotely female and breathing must look to him like "a hot chick." He said, "You gotta love those laws against pumping your own gas."
Jim Culp reported seeing a camel near Las Vegas. That admission may earn Culp, an attorney, a drug test when he returns to Salt Lake City.
Good News, Bad News, But Mostly Bad
Happily, Steve Losofsky's leg was not broken by the rock that crashed through his lower fairing yesterday. He sustained a very bad bruise. His partner at Reno BMW, Jan Cutler, retrieved the limping Losofsky.
Unhappily, Ardys Kellerman broke her left ankle and wrist when she ran off I-40 into the median strip near Grants, New Mexico, today. Her K75 was demolished. She was admitted to Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque. The cause of the accident is unknown, but it was not attributable to speed. People in a car following her told the state police that she was doing a steady 65 mph on the deserted highway. She was feeling well in San Diego.
Cross-country record-holder Ken Hatton, in sixth place after San Diego, is history. Apparently on the way to Florida by way of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, a sprocket in his ZX-11 disintegrated. It is his third straight DNF on the rally. Hatton's retirement brings the count to seven down and 47 to go.
Scooter jockey Ed Otto told Mike Kneebone this afternoon that the Helix is having grave trouble with the blast-furnace winds of west Texas. Calling from Fort Stockton, Otto said that he was barely able to manage 40 mph on I-10. If he can make it to Florida, a crew from the American Motorcycle Institute in Daytona will do a complete service on the machine.
September 3 - Day Five
Go East, Young Man
Or north. Then maybe east, then south. Or something. What the hell? Just go to Fort Lauderdale. Take 75 hours to ride the straight route there from San Diego and make at least 850 miles a day. For that effort, you get zero bonus points.
If you're rested, you could extend yourself to hit a large bonus site in Lebanon, Kansas, the former geographic center of the U.S., and for that endless, awful ride through the core of the Great Plains, you'll have to average 1,022 miles every day.
The riders who are truly in need of adult supervision will try for the biggest bonus of the third leg �� paying a visit to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota �� and will have to crank out just under 1,150 miles every day for three straight days.
No matter where you ride, you're looking at 100-plus-degree heat for 10 hours a day. And not a lot of sleep. And crummy gas-station food. And the visions, occasionally degenerating into hallucinations if you don't pay attention to what your brain, or the remains of it, is telling you.
One of the incidental victims of the rally is the rallymaster himself, Steve Chalmers. He'd probably be better off without a telephone, but he is perverse enough to have one and when it rings, he answers. It's rarely happy news.
They're bogging down out there. The reports are few but discouraging. Just taking the straight shot is looking like a closed checkpoint window in Fort Lauderdale to the stragglers. Ed Otto on the Helix scooter called rallymaster Steve Chalmers from Fort Stockton, Texas, at 5 p.m. on Saturday. Two other riders were with him. They were depressed, expecting to be deeper in the heart of Texas than they were. With the speeds they were maintaining, they won't make it.
Leonard Aron on the 1946 Indian called Chalmers from Houston. The bike is holding up better than he is. He has discovered that the ordinary routines of daily road life have become a cryptic puzzle. It is agonie de Butt, a common pathology. You stand at a gas pump eating a bacon cheeseburger with extra cholesterol. Suddenly you cannot recall if the burger should go in your mouth or get stuffed in the tank. Though he will be time-barred in Florida, Leonard's mood remains obstinately gleeful. He will try for Maine.
At least those sorts of calls are comprehensible. The ones from Rick Shrader, universally known as "Swamp Thing" as a tribute to his abrupt finish in the '91 IBR, can be positively disconcerting. Chalmers got one from Rick's wife today. She had just heard from The Thing and wanted to know if a couple of riders, including Steve Attwood, really had been shot.
"S-shot?" Chalmers stammered in horror.
"That's what Rick heard," she said. "He wants to know whether it's true that the rally is cancelled."
Rick has never actually completed the event. He won't finish this one, either. He was calling from New Mexico, roughly 1,000 miles short of where he needed to be.
I can commiserate with Rick, though. On the IBR the misinformation mill is broken if it is not running insanely amok. How a war correspondent ever gets anything accurate is an amazement to me. I used to look at Gunga Dan Rather reporting from Afghanistan and say, "There is no way that can be true." Sometimes it was; about as true, for example, as our report of Steve Attwood's untimely finish.
He'd banged a deer all right, but the accident was much more severe than had first been thought. He was hospitalized with a concussion, broken ribs, and a fractured collarbone. The oddity of it was that it was a low-speed crash, principally because he was limping toward San Francisco with a dying wheel bearing, the same problem that nearly cost him the rally two years ago. He had retired shortly after Spokane, realizing that he would be time-barred at the next two checkpoints.
Sic transit gloria Bambi.
September 4 - Day 6
Time on Their Hands
It shouldn't be that difficult, figuring out what Mickey is telling you. When the little hand points to 6 p.m., you have to be at the checkpoint in Fort Lauderdale. If you're not there, you start losing five points per minute. When Mickey's little hand points to 7 p.m. and your haggard face is not staring bleakly at checkpoint workers Dean (BMW Loco) Klein and Mike Kneebone, you have just been time-barred.
So if you've ridden 10 hours out of the straightest, quickest line from San Diego to grab that tantalizing 341 point bonus in Torrey, Utah �� we won't even begin to discuss that you'll be sleeping out in the cold, raw mountains that night because the Torrey gas station, where you need a receipt, won't open until 7 a.m. and the motel wouldn't open its doors to even Cheryl Tiegs after 11 p.m. -- you're going to watch 295 of those points swirl down the storm sewer when you show up in Florida at 6:59 p.m. Your bonus has gone straight to hell and you'll never get those 10 hours of sleep back, at least not while it counts.
It could be worse. You could show up at 7:01 p.m. and lose about 1,800 octobillion points, condemning you to the "also-ran" category and ensuring that email will let people around the world know how you screwed the pooch.
Ask Ron Ayres, the hard charger who was in second place in San Diego. Not only did he come within 120 seconds of being shut out in Florida after a 4,000-mile ride, he managed to lose all his receipts between San Diego and Abilene, Texas, because he didn't zip his tank bag. So much for those bonus claims. The way his ride is turning, he's probably fortunate that he wasn't arrested for littering.
Frank Taylor, third in San Diego, fared even worse. He tried to make Mount Rushmore, a journey that would have required his averaging almost 48 mph for 75 continuous hours, and came up short. Count him out of it. The only other rider in the field who tried for South Dakota was Ken Hatton. His bike perished in the attempt.
Swamp Thing Shrader is, predictably, orbiting somewhere between Mars and Asteroid B612. Knowing that he would never make Fort Lauderdale in this century, he concluded that he would cut his losses and head straight for the next checkpoint near Portland, Maine. Better check those rules first, Thing. You still have to prove that you went to Fort Lauderdale, even if a week late, or they won't even look at your paperwork in Maine.
Also time-barred in Florida were Fritz and Phyllis Lang, and Leonard Aron on the '46 Indian. They all insist that they will be attempting the northbound leg. Aron's bike continues to run, look, and sound better than he does.
Iron Butt horror stories are not usually balanced with serendipitous ones, but Chuck Pickett and Mary Sue Johnson took a fastball under the chin and came up smiling. Thinking they were running an hour behind schedule, they appeared at the Burger King checkpoint to discover that it opened at 6:00 p.m., not 5:00. I think it's Mickey's white gloves that throw people off. Maybe they need some sequins.
Surviving various catastrophes to move up several places were IBR veteran Eddie Metz, always a top-10 finisher, Marty Jones, Morris Kruemeke, and Eddie James. The latter overcame bashing his front wheel on a curb, trying to domesticate a headlight bulb, and running out of gas for a delay of almost five hours. He moved from eighth to fourth. With a few more disasters, Eddie could be in excellent shape by rally's end.
Motorcycle Consumer News' entry, the Honda Helix scooter with Ed Otto aboard, was swamped with curious admirers at the Florida control. Some 150 people had gathered to see the little engine that could. The machine currently leads, among others, a Gold Wing, Venture, ST1100, GSXR1100, and K75, bikes that have three to five times greater engine displacement than the diminutive putter.
At 7:00 p.m. on the dot, the field headed for the Great Satan himself, Interstate 95, for the interminable ride north. Tick tick tick. It's the sound of time hurrying more rapidly and relentlessly than even Gary Eagan.
THE TOP TEN AT CHECKPOINT NO. 3
1 Gary Eagan BMW K1100LT 9,263
2 Eddie Metz Honda Gold Wing 9,117
3 Marty Jones Kawasaki Voyager 9,108
4 Eddie James BMW K1100RS 8,920
5 Morris Kruemeke Honda Gold Wing 8,789
6 Boyd Young BMW K100RS 8,557
7 Ron Ayres BMW K1100LT 8,487
8 Rick Morrison BMW R100RT 8,458
9 Eugene McKinney BMW R1100RS 8,426
10 Ron Major Honda ST1100 8,413
Others of note:
14 Jesse Pereboom H-D FLHT 8,167 (top H-D)
20 Karol Patzer BMW K75C 7,931 (top woman)
September 5 - Day 7
Throwing Dice
In 1987, when I was young and stupid, I spent about six months plotting the fastest way around the country, trying to hit all 48 states in under 11 days. A few days before my scheduled departure, a friend mentioned casually that I could knock off 300 miles by taking Road A instead of Road B somewhere out in Nebraska. Well, I thought, maybe it was the only mistake I would make.
It wasn't. Somehow I got through the trip in one piece, wrote a long story about it, and decided that it was yet another entry on the increasingly long list of trips I never wanted to do again. But it did partially atone for all the years I'd spent busting my butt on a bike to no good purpose whatsoever.
The Iron Butt boys and girls �� well, the average age of the starters is 46.3 �� are being tempted to do what I did, though the pressures on them are considerably higher. They have to make checkpoints. I didn't. And I averaged a slothful 750 miles a day. In Florida the bottom man still running was doing better than that, the median rider was averaging 921, and Roy Ayres, at the top, had been hitting 1,150 every day for nearly a week. The temptation to bag each of the contiguous states comes in the form of a bonus in excess of 3,000 points. Rallymaster Steve Chalmers sprang it on them as the final surprise of the rider�s meeting. More than a couple of eyebrows were raised. Months before the rally began, attorney Eric Faires suspected something like this was coming, which tells me that the O. J. prosecutors could have used his talents. Studying various computer mapping problems led him to believe that it would be out of his range.
But it might not be out of the question for some other riders. It has been known for some time that Morris Kruemcke, Eddie James, Gary Eagan, and Martin Hildebrandt (a German citizen who speaks better English than you do) have been eyeing the enormous bonus. Obviously, grabbing that brass ring can turn the rally standings upside down. In 1991 a mere six points separated the top three riders at the end.
Kruemcke can do it; he made no secret of his considering it soon as Chalmers announced it. Eagan obviously is capable, as his first-place position at all three checkpoints to date conclusively proves. Eddie James, with his erstwhile riding companion, Lyle the (stuffed) Bear, could probably nail all 48 and some of the Canadian provinces, if he doesn't do something insane along the way. Even if Hildebrandt could make it, the party is over for him; he is currently mired in 36th place.
Former repeat Iron Butt contestants themselves, Chalmers and Kneebone know that the rally is not won by riding at triple-digit speeds for 23 hours a day. It is a battle between a complex series of bonus trade-offs and a fading capacity to analyze them intelligently. There is normally only one route that will produce a maximum leg score and yet provide at least a minimum amount of rest for the energy to continue. It has never been easy to calculate; this year it's harder.
In 49 B.C. Julius Caesar camped at the edge of the Rubicon River in northern Italy. On the other side, daring him to cross, were the disgusting Cisalpine Gaul, whose descendants would fail to win a single war of any consequence in the 20th century, though they did build cathedrals of some interest in Paris and Chartres. Caesar stared back at them, irritated. His orders from the Roman Senate were unmistakable. Don't do it, they'd said. "Cogito, ergo sum," Caesar responded, which loosely translates to "I'll roll the dice." And he did. History does not record what the dice total was, but on the steps of the Louvre they're still talking about what happened next.
Is there a Caesar in the Iron Butt field? I wish I knew.
September 6 - Day 8
Iron Men, Iron Butts, and Iron Bears
The BMW K1100RS aimed by the stuffed bear, Lyle, with Eddie James riding along for comic relief, jumped from fourth to first place at the Gorham, Maine, checkpoint today. This raunchy animal, tattered beyond human powers of description, moth-eaten and patched, and looking like something the cat wouldn't even want to bring in the house, has ridden steadily from the start. The stuffed bear is having a good ride too.
With an amazing 4,749 bonus points on the Florida-to-Maine leg, James shot past a faltering Gary Eagan, a consistent Marty Jones, and the wiry veteran Eddie Metz. James' bonus total for the leg was second only to the staggering 5,000-plus posted by Tom Loegering on an R1100GS.
James was reported to be looking as well as could be expected after more than a week of 1,000-plus-mile days. Instead of taking the bonus gold mines in West Virginia on his way north, he apparently opted for an easterly route that included passing over and through the Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel to Maryland's eastern shore. There he had a full night's sleep before pressing on to Maine. He said that he has given up the quest for the more than 3,000-point 48-state bonus.
In an article for Motorcyclist Magazine following the 1993 IBR, I wrote, "Before the [end of the event], there would be an atomized universal joint, seized valves, croaked carbs, oil seepage to challenge the Exxon Valdez, and two charging-system failures that threatened to turn the motorcycle into an electric chair. AND THAT WAS JUST ONE BIKE!"
The rider on that Hell Hound was Tom Loegering, who, despite adversity that would prompt an angel to swear like a sailor, had risen steadily to third place in the standings at the next-to-last checkpoint before a final mechanical failure knocked him back to seventh place overall. Many consider his ride to be the most remarkable story in Iron Butt history.
And he's doing it again, but this time on a bike that won't break. His BMW R1100GS, one of the world's most awesome dual-sport machines, took him to an absurd array of bonuses from Florida to Maine, including a bizarre excursion to the tip of Cape Cod. It is a dual-lane road that barely rises to the level of a highway, and had to have been packed with clotting mobs of Labor Day tourists. Yet he did it, and rocketed from 15th to third place in the process.
Gary Eagan, the leader at the first three controls, went in the tank. He told checkpoint workers in Maine that he "thinks" he is having bike trouble. Now I can understand how a woman might think she is pregnant, but isn't bike trouble something that is pretty much a binary proposition? I mean, either there's trouble or there's not. Some insiders detect the scent of either a sandbag or a burnout in the air. Eagan missed Delaware and New Jersey on his ride north. In his continuing quest for the 48-state bonus, he said that he will backtrack to pick them up on his way to Salt Lake City for the rally's finish late Saturday afternoon. We'll see.
Winner of the longest-distance-travelled-to-the-start award, Germany's Martin Hildebrandt, arrived in Maine with 7.5 hours to spare and believes that he can indeed manage all 48 states. Late arrivals, but avoiding the dreaded miss, were Brad Hogue, Karol Patzer, Garve Nelson, Doug Stover, and the MacAteers. Taking a miss were Mary Sue Johnson, Chuck Pickett, and Rick Morrison, who sheepishly admitted that he'd gotten greedy, tried to grab some bonuses in New Jersey, became helplessly lost, and dove from the top 10 to 39th position. Each of them is still running and hopeful of making the final run back to Salt Lake City.
And what of the hapless wanderer, Rick "Swamp Thing" Shrader, who continues to orbit in deep space? On the morning after the Maine control closed, rallymaster Steve Chalmers sent an email to Mike Kneebone. "You'll love this. I just got a call from Jean Shrader and she said, 'Rick won't make the checkpoint in Maine.' When I explained to her that it was yesterday and not today, she seemed quite surprised." Thing, with another DNF under his Iron Butt belt, now is on his way to the finish at his customary speed of Warp 9, probably with his anti-Klingon shields fully deployed.
Texan Morris Kruemcke did worse than Eagan on the leg, but his dive may not be telling the whole story. If he can make the 48-state bonus, as he has planned to do from the start, he could find himself in an enviable position, such as first, in another three days.
The Honda 250cc scooter, against all odds, persists in ferrying Ed Otto from point to point. As in each of the previous three legs, the Helix has gained ground in the standings, on this round beating such hotshoes as Eagan, Metz, and Kruemcke. They said it couldn't be done. Hell, I said it couldn't be done.
Finally, on a day when Iron Men (and women) are not far from our thoughts, we should not forget an inspiration for all of the contestants. Today, for breaking a record that was believed could stand forever, a simple "Thanks, Cal Ripken" will do, I think.
Position Total Total
# Name Bike WA CA FL Points Points
1 James, Eddie BMW 11 8 4 4,749 13,669
2 Jones, Martin Kawasaki 9 9 3 4,544 13,652
3 Loegering, Tom BMW 19 15 15 5,109 13,263
4 Eagan, Gary BMW 1 1 1 3,719 12,982
5 Ayres, Ron BMW 3 2 7 4,479 12,966
6 Metz, Eddie Honda 5 4 2 3,674 12,791
7 McKinney, Eugene BMW 33 14 9 4,337 12,763
8 Pereboom, Jesse H-D 30 13 14 4,579 12,746
9 Major, Ron Honda 14 20 10 4,314 12,727
10 Eastwood, Roy BMW 13 18 17 4,406 12,476
11 Brooks, Harold Honda 22 21 18 4,390 12,401
12 Stockton, Michael BMW 21 17 12 3,992 12,319
13 Faires, Eric BMW 41 33 16 4,138 12,263
14 Kruemcke, Morris Honda 6 7 5 3,436 12,225
15 Donovan, Kevin Honda 34 24 19 4,130 12,123
16 Keating, Keith BMW 17 46 24 4,314 12,046
17 Young, Boyd BMW 10 12 6 3,462 12,019
18 Hogue, Bradley Honda 12 11 11 3,454 11,852
19 Clemmons, Jerry Honda 24 23 13 3,212 11,491
20 Haak, Horst BMW 35 34 22 3,667 11,455
21 Rowland, Hank BMW 36 35 21 3,667 11,455
22 Otto, Ed Honda 43 36 26 3,751 11,442
23 Smith, Gregg Yamaha 29 26 27 3,751 11,432
24 Culp, Jim Honda 26 30 23 3,291 11,026
25 Fickess, Ed Yamaha 16 28 30 3,273 10,852
26 Searcy, Dennis H-D 42 27 25 3,040 10,765
27 Thommes, William H-D 44 38 29 3,000 10,604
28 Murphy, Michael Honda 37 29 31 3,013 10,578
29 Elberfeld, Charles BMW 38 25 32 3,013 10,513
30 Patzer, Karol BMW 28 31 20 2,453 10,384
31 Mello, Kevin BMW 46 40 35 3,000 10,381
32 Hildebrandt, Martin Honda 47 44 36 3,000 10,350
33 Kerslake, David Suzuki 27 32 38 3,000 10,336
34 Ransbottom, Robert BMW 50 41 40 3,000 10,156
35 Stover, Doug Honda 45 37 34 2,343 9,761
36 Nelson, Garve Honda 49 47 39 2,270 9,545
37 McAteer, Ron&Karen Honda 48 45 37 1,930 9,280
38 Taylor, Frank Yamaha 7 3 41 2,750 8,501
39 Morrison, Rick BMW 15 10 8 0 8,458
40 Johnson, Mary Sue H-D 25 16 28 0 7,657
41 Pickett, Chuck Honda 32 19 33 0 7,432
42 Shrader, Rick BMW 2 5 42 0 5,573
43 Hatton, Ken Kawasaki 8 6 43 0 5,484
44 Kellerman, Ardys BMW 23 22 44 0 4,817
45 Aron, Leonard Indian 39 39 45 0 4,688
46 Lang, Phyliss H-D 51 42 46 0 4,643
47 Lang, Fritz Honda 52 43 47 0 4,643
48 Fairchild, Robert Honda 54 48 48 0 4,250
49 Losofsky, Steve BMW 4 49 49 0 2,639
50 Gottfredson, Gary BMW 18 50 50 0 2,251
51 Attwood, Steve Guzzi 20 51 51 0 2,242
52 Loegering, T. Jr BMW 31 52 52 0 2,204
53 Bush, Brian BMW 40 53 53 0 2,193
54 Honemann, Bob BMW 53 54 54 0 2,175
55 Ciccarelli, Skip Guzzi 55 55 55 0 0
September 8 - Day 10
Riding Home
Late Friday afternoon, with just 24 hours remaining in the rally, Mike Kneebone said, "They've been calling Steve Chalmers and me all day. I think they're all fried. They won't say it, but it's pretty clear: They think we're Mommy and Daddy and they want us to tell them to come home."
In its final hours this edition of the Iron Butt Rally is reverting to form. In 1993 Steve Attwood walked away from the field, but his finish is not typical. Most rallies are lost, not won, in the closing hours by exotic mistakes that can be explained only by a psychiatrist. In the '91 IBR the difference between first and third place was six points. Ron Major was the beneficiary of crushing, unbelievable errors by two other riders mere hours from the rally's conclusion. It could be true in 1995.
One day Eddie James, who held a tiny 16-point lead over Marty Jones in Maine, will explain to his grandchildren why he decided to visit Reading, Pennsylvania, for 117 points. Of the 34 possible bonus sites on the Maine-to-Utah leg, none �� I repeat, none �� is worth fewer points. He'll tell them how much time he lost riding through the awful, mountainous state roads instead of steaming west on an interstate highway at flank speed toward Colorado where the real bonus locations were. He may mention that he left his camera, and the Polaroid photo that was proof of his visit to the worthless bonus site, behind. He'll tell them, but they won't believe it.
Morris Kruemcke wanted a Rhode Island bridge in the middle of nowhere. He must like bridges, because there sure wasn't any other reason to lose so much time for 291 points. Of course, for 10 fewer points he could have hooked the Rodeo Hall of Fame lying just 100 yards off I-25 in Colorado Springs. Having sacrificed so much for so long for the 48-state bonus, he admitted to Kneebone Friday morning in a telephone call that the hope for that has probably dried up like yesterday's tears. At that point Morris was several hours behind Ed Otto and the Honda scooter.
That remarkable duo was last heard from on Friday night. They were holed up in a motel in Grand Island, Nebraska. Ed had planned to get five hours of sleep and run the last 800 miles to Salt Lake in 14 hours. That is not a minor-league ride for a touring bike. But for a 250cc scooter and its gutsy pilot, it is merely the conclusion of an impossible story, one that seems destined to come true. Eddie and the Helix have more fans around the country crossing their fingers than they ever could have dreamed possible.
Meanwhile, there is almost a complete blackout surrounding the rest of the front runners in Maine. Marty Jones, nipping at Eddie James' heels, was believed to have captured the mother lode of bonuses near Denver by mid-day Friday and may have headed to Yellowstone National Park for more. If true, he is superbly positioned and could be the man to beat. He has run a flawless rally.
When the sun drops over the yardarm tomorrow afternoon, it will begin to sear the riders' eyes as they plow west. Mentally they will calculate the hours remaining, the miles yet to go, and their chances of sliding into the narrow time window that opens at 5:00 p.m. MDT. They will return to the motel parking lot that they left 264 hours and so many, many miles ago.
They know the way home. They just have to get there. Somehow.
September 9 - Day 11
On the Flight Deck, the Fat Lady Warms Up
It was a scene from a grade-B movie. The grizzled admiral, Steve Chalmers, stood on the bridge of the aircraft carrier, which looked remarkably like a motel parking lot in Salt Lake City, wondering where his pilots were. Beside him was his adjutant, Mike Kneebone, trying unsuccessfully to hide his anxiety. He knew that some of the planes would not be returning from this mission.
Gastonia, North Carolian, Gold Wing pilot Jerry Clemmons was the first to touch down on the deck. He slowly unbolted himself from the bike, smiled wanly, and said, "I ride a lot. Back home everyone knows me for doing big miles. But these guys whipped my butt."
He took his evidence towel out, the shocking pink one with his rider number stenciled prominently on it. For 11 days he had hung the towel on signs and photographed it as proof of his having visited a bonus site. Now he simply wiped his face with it. For pilot Clemmons the ordeal was over.
Neurosurgeon Mike Murphy came in next. He had a photo of his towel draped over a police car in North Carolina. It was a joke. He'd run the entire event without having been stopped.
They began to appear with increasing frequency just after noon. Tennessee's Eric Faires, looking too relaxed after what he'd been through. Canada's Roy Eastwood, driven away from a gigantic bonus in northern Michigan by gale-force winds. Virginia's Harold Brooks, taking a straight shot from Maine. Mississippi's Eugene McKinney, rising from 33rd at the first checkpoint to seventh place in Maine.
At 12:30 p.m. the first of the true aces, Tom Loegering, popped out of the sky on his fearsome BMW dual-sport R1100GS, a dirt bike with an attitude. In heroic fashion he had just crushed another leg and instantly became the man to beat. One who could do just that, customs agent Marty Jones, showed up next. He too had grabbed a fistful of bonuses on the final leg. Would it be enough?
Keating, Thommes, and Fickess arrived. "I saw Gregg Smith doing push-ups at a rest stop on the Ohio Turnpike," the latter said. "It was raining. I said, `What the hell?' and just kept riding." Fickess had just passed a man who, before the day was out, would make Iron Butt history.
Karol Patzer, Frank Taylor, and Gregg Smith rolled in. For Patzer, it was her first attempt at the event and she completed it with style. For Taylor the rally was a letdown from his second-place finish in 1993. For the shy, self-effacing Smith, it was just another 11 days at the office. He is the only person ever to have completed four of these brutal events.
As the afternoon wore on, more arrived. Morrison, Rowland, Stockton, and Hogue. Charles Elberfeld, not even bothering to get off his bike, looked at Chalmers and said, "Now, once again, just how many laps is this thing?"
Donovan, Young, Haak, Metz, Ransbottom, and Searcy. Forty-five minutes before the checkpoint officially opened, Minnesota's Eddie James, the leader of the pack in Maine, rolled in. He had overcome initial difficulties on the leg, somehow summoned the power to recover, and had mined the bonus gold field near Denver. He had done all he could do. He knew it would be close.
"You won't believe what I saw in the Wasatch Mountains," James laughed. "A half-mile ahead of me was what I thought was a Gold Wing, struggling to make the uphill grade. Trucks in first gear were passing the poor thing."
Stover, Kerslake, Culp, and long-ball hitter Morris Kruemcke came in at 4:45 p.m. Ten minutes later another contender, Gary Eagan, who had led at the first three checkpoints, pulled up. He had averaged over 1,100 miles each day for 11 days. No one on this event would ride farther.
In the final minutes before the checkpoint opened and the lateness penalties began to accumulate, Jesse Pereboom on his Harley battlewagon hove into view. "They said it would burn up in the desert," he smiled. "It didn't." Ron Major, the '91 IBR winner, ducked in under the wire.
Mary Sue Johnson and Chuck Pickett, riding together as Siamese twins, were nine minutes late. "She is the best motorcyclist I've ever ridden with," Pickett said. "I can't wait to do this again."
At 5:22, taking a few lateness points, the apparition that Eddie James had earlier seen in the mountains appeared. It hadn't been a Gold Wing. It wasn't even a real motorcycle. It was just Ed Otto and the Honda Helix. For days he had manhandled the scooter up thousands of hills. He'd been stopped by a trooper on an interstate for not being able to make the minimum speed due to headwinds. He had continued, and his arrival wrote "finis" to one of the Iron Butt's most incredible stories of perseverance in the face of unimaginable adversity.
But Kneebone's fears were justified. Not all would make it back before the two-hour time window slammed shut. Garve Nelson, at 71 the oldest entrant, called to say he would not arrive until the following morning. Ron and Karen MacAteer did the same. But their proof of arrival in Salt Lake City tomorrow will credit them with a finish on the Iron Butt rally. Not one motorcyclist in 50,000 can claim that achievement.
September 9 - Day 11
And He's Doing It Again
Brian Bush nodded to his cameraman. Something clicked softly. The videotape began to glide silently along its serpentine course, stealing my soul many times per second. I pretended not to care. I've done TV interviews before. You don't feel it when your soul is kidnapped, but you do feel strangely lighter afterwards.
The riders were in the banquet room, receiving final instructions from rallymaster Steve Chalmers. Since I wasn't a rider, my date was with Brian and his documentary film crew in a motel room down the hall. His film will be available soon. I want a copy of it. I want my soul back.
Brian asked me a question.
"No," I said with a small smile. "They won't let me run the Iron Butt Rally. You need a certificate of sanity from your psychiatrist to enter. My psychiatrist won't give me one. I know a lot of those riders. I don't have a clue how they get their certificates. Some of them are in much worse shape than I am."
I rambled on for a while.
"Who's going to win this?" Brian asked toward the end.
Good question, I thought.
"Steve Attwood," I said. "Maybe Ron Major. Eddie James, if he doesn't do something completely crazy."
But I forgot to mention one man, the fellow who had stormed through the 1993 Iron Butt course like Genghis Khan through Tibet, facing mechanical disaster on every leg without exception, and still gaining ground on the leaders with each mile. A final electrical problem on the last leg doomed him to seventh place. In an article about that rally, I wrote, "He had finally run out of time to recover, but he never ran out of heart. It was quintessential Iron Butt, a story of indomitable will, good for the ages." A few days ago, with the results from Maine in hand, I wrote here, "And he's doing it again."
So here is the headline for this year's Iron Butt Rally: "Dirt Bike Wins World's Toughest Street Rally!" And Tom Loegering deserves this win in a way that few people deserve anything, if for no other reason than as a payback for the undiluted hell he endured two years ago.
He didn't ride the most miles this year; he was third. But he was second and third in the "most miles" category on the final two legs, where the rally always is won or lost. Loegering also did all 48 states, the smart way, picking up the bonuses along the way that he needed. Only one other entrant, Martin Hildebrandt, received the all-states bonus, which boosted him from 32nd place in Maine to fifth overall. It was obviously a goal worth the shot.
Eddie James and his wasted companion, Lyle the Bear, finished second, unable at the end to grab all the states. It was a remarkable run for the young Minnesotan, whose dramatic departure from the 1993 rally is the stuff of comic legend.
Other hard riders �� Gary Eagan, Marty Jones, Eddie Metz, Morris Kruemcke, and Ron Ayres, all flirting with the top position for so long �� found that a single strategic error in 12,000 miles can be ruinous to a score sheet. Their accomplishments are, nonetheless, singular. Few riders will ever have a single 1,000-mile day; among these awesome men there were close to 50 such days, one after another.
In any endeavor of extraordinary purpose, drama demands the presence of an underdog who can struggle through labors that even Hercules would have shunned. This year it was no contest. The Motorcycle Consumer News entry of Ed Otto and the Honda Helix finished 24th overall in a field of some of the toughest riders and motorcyclists that can be found anywhere. His friends know that it is next to impossible to erase the smile from Eddie's face, even when normal people would be gnawing on rocks. On this happiest of nights for him, Ed must be smiling even more broadly in his well-deserved sleep. Their story was the distillate of enchantment.
In the motel room Brian Bush was trying to think of a way to phrase the question without being rude. He wanted to know . . . er, why? Why would anyone do this? Why undergo such self-inflicted torture? Was it just another tired verse of the mountaineer's song, "Because it's there�? If it was there, where exactly was it? Utah, Oregon, New Mexico? The riders had not even left yet. When they returned, no one would remember. It would have been too many miles ago. The riders who made it back to Salt Lake City would ring up close to 400,000 of them.
I think I know why.
The answer may be, in this most sublimely solitary of sports, ironically a question of companionship. The riders rarely see each other, dancing as they do across the country in chaotic, Brownian motion. If they're not riding, getting gas, eating dinner while standing up, sleeping, or asking the attendant for the key, they're wasting time. They're not talking to anyone, except maybe to themselves.
But think of the end. Think how glorious it will be to get off the bike and not have to count the minutes until you have to strap yourself onto it again. When you turn off the key for the last time, there aren't 100 people on earth who can seriously appreciate what you have undergone. About 40 of them will show up at a motel west of Salt Lake City, looking as pounded as you do. They are the only ones who know. The rest of us can only guess.
You ride this endless ride to be one of them.
These men and women, no matter how low the number may be in the first column, deserve a round of applause:
How Lyle the Bear Nearly Had the Stuffing Knocked Out of Him:
It occasionally irritates Eddie James to wear his helmet, even the half-helmet shorty that is not much for looks or anything else. Sometimes when it's hot, he will strap it onto Lyle's soft, vacant head. The stuffed animal sits behind him, tied onto the bike with a bungie cord. And so it was on the last afternoon of the rally as the dynamic duo headed west towards Salt Lake City on Interstate 80.
They rode quietly for a few miles. James noticed that suddenly something had begun to bite his back, as if a bee had flown down his shirt. He turned to see that the shock cord had frayed. The metal hook was trying to become one with his kidney. Worse, Lyle was no longer aboard, as he had been for more than 200,000 miles. Horrified, James glanced into his rear-view mirror. Oh, Lord.
He saw the poor animal about 100 yards behind him, bouncing west toward Salt Lake in the middle of the highway. The helmet was still firmly fixed to his shaggy noggin. "This is bad," Eddie thought.
It was about to get a lot worse in a hurry.
James also observed that some distance behind the bouncing bear, a car, seeing that the bike's passenger had become a pedestrian, had not only locked up its wheels in a cloud of boiling rubber, but had also thrown out a sea anchor. The vehicle, utterly out of control, began to spin in tight circles, still heading west and miraculously remaining more or less in its own lane.
James applied his brakes in a less dramatic fashion and stopped on the side of the highway. He ran back to the bear, yelling "Lyle! Lyle!" The car's driver, having come to a halt short of Lyle (who mercifully had stopped tumbling), was himself running toward the small, lifeless form. His face was ashen.
Eddie, arriving at the carnage first, picked the bear up by the
heel and began to dust him off against his leg. The driver drew up short, stunned.
"It's a godd . . . It's a godd . . . It's a goddamn teddy bear!" the poor man stammered, quivering with fright.
"Yeah," Eddie agreed.
"You could have killed us all!" the man screamed.
"So could you," Eddie replied. "Driving that way."
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